


By the Terebinths of Mamre

by Roga



Category: Bible (Old Testament), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, תנ"ך | Tanakh
Genre: Community: purimgifts, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-03
Updated: 2009-03-03
Packaged: 2020-04-06 05:06:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19055815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roga/pseuds/Roga
Summary: Aziraphale has many missions in Genesis. This is one.





	By the Terebinths of Mamre

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Daegaer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daegaer/gifts).



> Written as Day 1 and Day 2 Purimgifts ficlets for Daegaer way back in 2009, now belatedly posted here as one part woohoo.

Divine will, Aziraphale sometimes thought, had a lovely sort of poetry, and a rather surprising sense of humor. “He will laugh” – it really was a delightful thing to name a child, Isaac. Aziraphale himself had often wished to be named something less, hmm, multisyllabic. Not that he was in any way complaining about his own name, or the one who named him. Er. Aziraphale really had to learn how to brake his train of thought.

The boy’s name, in any case, would be Isaac. But in order for all the poetry to happen, a few more steps had to take place on the way – namely, a few more laughs. Presumably –although who was Aziraphale to presume? – one laugh was not dramatic enough. Which was why Aziraphale was on his way to the desert in disguise, ready to take on anything that came in his way, be it excellent hospitality or delicious cakes. 

All right, so this mission wasn’t exactly supposed to be a difficult one. Aziraphle supposed it might have been assigned to him as a treat, considering the task he was assigned to after that.

Either way, there would be cake. Abraham’s wife might not have been prime baby-making material at the age of ninety, but rumor had it she knew her way around a chunk of dough.

Sarah had been following Abraham for many years, and Aziraphale had been trailing Abraham, in a vague this-is-someone-who-might-turn-out-to-be-quite-important-eventually kind of way – so really, one might say, he had been following Sarah too. He’d never paid too much attention to her – oh, sure, her beauty has made foreign kings fall at her feet, and Abraham heeded her advice, which was certainly worthy of notice. But she was, in the end, just another wife. And not a very likeable one, at that. Who banishes a pregnant woman out into the wilderness? “Go back. Submit thyself under her hands,” Aziraphale had told Hagar uselessly, apparently unable to come up with a lamer yet piece of advice, as Hagar clutched her swollen belly and gasped with sobs in that fountain on the road to Shur. Really, he considered. Sarah was a bitch. 

Aziraphale paused. 

“Are you putting _thoughts_ in my head?”

The air behind him made an uncomfortable sort of sound. “I would never,” it said. Crowley’s figure appeared from thin air with a swirl of dust. “I don’t even think I could.”

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow.

“All right, yes, I would,” Crowley admitted. “And I have been working on projecting wicked thoughts and such. But it really is for your own good, my boy. You let yourself get too attached to these people your man upstairs favors, and then there are floods and deaths and ambiguously incestuous rapes all over, and suddenly you’re in a barrel of wine weeping about the good old days when you had your sword and I had no feet and nobody you loved ever left you. To be quite frank, it’s embarrassing.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “You could have just said, ‘I’m trying to make you hate mankind because I’m evil.’”

“Doesn’t have the same ring to it though, does it?”

*

In the distance, Aziraphale could see their tent, skins rolled up on two sides, the other two sides billowing with the wind. “You’re headed up there?” Crowley asked, and then, of course, tagged along at Aziraphale’s affirmative response, because sometimes evil meant tempting innocents and corrupting the young, and sometimes it just meant being a nag.

Abraham hustled and bustled when they arrived, surprisingly agile for a man who’d recently had his – well – cut off. And there were cakes, and the rumors were true – the cakes were, to use an overused term, heavenly. And it was their maker Aziraphale was interested in at the moment. “Where is Sarah, thy wife?” he intoned. 

“Here in the tent,” Abraham said, puzzled. 

“Er, right.” Aziraphale puffed out his chest, as was appropriate for these kinds of occasions. “Well. I will certainly return unto thee when the season cometh round; and lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son.”

For a while, everyone stood around looking very solemn. No one said a word. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go,” Aziraphale finally hissed to Crowley from the side of his mouth. “They’re supposed to, er. Laugh.”

“I think I can help with that.” Crowley smirked – and then proceeded to tell a joke so filthy that Aziraphale knew he would spend the entire next day still wanting to scrub his ears with sand, and really, he knew the Lord worked in mysterious ways but _honestly_. The old couple did laugh, though, after a shocked little silence, followed by an even more shocked silence of Godly intervention and Sarah’s realization that there was hope yet. It was fairly touching. That didn’t stop Aziraphale from still being disturbed by the joke a short while later, when they left the tent.

“…they’re just tent dwellers, I don’t know that they even know what aristocrats _are_ ,” Aziraphale complained as they strolled out, Abraham walking just a step behind them. “Did you really have to add that part about the three-legged-mule?”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” Crowley said, and then waggled his eyebrows. “For a price, of course.”

“Oh, for – what is it?” Aziraphale asked crossly.

“Terror. Mayhem. Your next stop, after leaving this joint.”

Realization dawned. “So _that’s_ why you’re here.” He really should have figured it out on his own.

Crowley grinned. “There’s no reason your side should get to do all the killing.”

“Fine,” Aziraphale sighed. “Just... try not to enjoy it too much.” And he really could use the company, he supposed. Aziraphale drew out his sword. It flashed a little, excitedly.

“You kept it!” Crowley said with delight. And they rose up from thence, and looked out toward Sodom.

**Author's Note:**

>   
> Illustrations by E.M. Lilien


End file.
